Coordinated Entry / Diversion

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Coordinated Entry Six-Month Evaluation (May 2018)

Pierce County Human Services is pleased to share an evaluation of the Coordinated Entry System’s first six months. Conducted by Focus Strategies, the evaluation tells us that while CES is generally achieving its goals, there is more work to be done. We’re taking these insights to heart and redoubling our commitment to identifying where and how we can improve CES.

Diversion White Papers (April 2018)

Diversion is a "light touch" approach to ending homelessness that encourages and helps households to come up with their own solutions to housing crises. In a recent pilot with Building Changes, more than half of Pierce County families that participated in Diversion found safe housing through the process. Because Diversion doesn't require intensive case management or other system resources, it's quicker and more cost-effective than other approaches, which frees up resources for more families in need. In April 2018, Building Changes released its initial evaluation of the process in Pierce County.

Learn more about Diversion and read Building Changes' white papers here.

How We Got Here: From Centralized Intake to Coordinated Entry

In 2014, Pierce County Human Services engaged Focus Strategies to assist with the refinement of the existing intake and assessment tools used by the community's Centralized Intake (CI) system, Access Point for Housing (A4PH). To inform their recommendations for system improvement, Focus Strategies conducted an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of that system. The analysis focused on the effectiveness of the AP4H system in conducting intake and assessment and making referrals to housing programs. Followed are key results of that system:

The Centralized Intake assessment tool was inefficient and often duplicative of the intake processes used by program providers.

Centralized Intake did not utilize objective criteria to prioritize access to housing programs.

Homeless system objectives were to fill provider vacancies using the criteria for acceptance defined by the providers (i.e. the clients the providers want to house), rather than to find an appropriate placement for every household that goes on the wait list.

Centralized Intake data was not integrated with HMIS, making it very difficult to track what happens with clients from the time they contact CI until they enter housing.

There were side doors and parallel system was not right sized to meet the need, relying too heavily on temporary housing and not enough on permanent housing options.

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Coordinated Entry & Prioritization Work Group

In response to the findings and recommendations in the Centralized Intake assessment, Human Services staff engaged A Community Work Group to help create the Prioritization Tool that uses a vulnerability and housing lens to make appropriate recommendations to housing programs and mainstream services. Below are the minutes from the Work Group meetings: